Nigeria’s oil and gas industry must overhaul how it trains and retains workers if the country’s energy companies are to meet future production and investment targets, according to the head of the industry’s leading workforce-development body.
Chris Osarunmewense, president of the Oil and Gas Trainers Association of Nigeria (OGTAN), told an audience of executives, regulators and educators in Warri that the sector’s long-term competitiveness now depends less on capital spending and more on building a pipeline of skilled workers.
‘Human capital develops by progression,’ Osarunmewense said in a keynote address at a networking dinner opening OGTAN’s Human Capital Development Conference and Exhibition 2026. ‘At OGTAN, therefore, we treasure the potential of people who have developed human capital in nature, to effectively operate within the oil and gas industry.’
The remarks mark the start of a two-day conference, the first in what OGTAN describes as a continuing series of industry conversations, aimed at aligning training providers, universities, regulators and oil companies around the skills gaps facing Africa’s largest crude producer.
The event is being held in partnership with the Petroleum Training Institute, one of Nigeria’s principal technical schools for the sector.
The choice of Warri over Lagos or Abuja, OGTAN’s traditional conference cities, was deliberate, Osarunmewense said. The Niger Delta city sits at the historical center of Nigeria’s petroleum industry, home to decades of exploration, production and technical training activity.
‘Warri is not simply a venue; it is part of the history of Nigeria’s oil and gas industry,’ he said, adding that OGTAN wanted delegates to ‘experience Nigeria not merely as a geographical location associated with petroleum production, but as a region of talent, enterprise, technical expertise, institutions, communities, and enormous human capital potential.’
Nigeria’s oil sector has struggled in recent years with production shortfalls, ageing infrastructure and an exodus of experienced engineers to overseas markets, even as the government pushes to attract new upstream investment under revised industry legislation. Industry groups have repeatedly flagged workforce development as a bottleneck to reversing that decline.
Osarunmewense argued that no single actor could close the gap alone. ‘The challenges before the industry are too complex for any single organisation to solve,’ he said. ‘Government alone cannot solve it. Regulators cannot solve it alone. Oil and gas companies cannot solve it alone. Training providers cannot solve it alone. Universities and technical institutions cannot do so alone either. We need collaboration across the value chain.’
He urged attendees to treat the conference’s informal moments, networking sessions, meals and a golf tournament held earlier in the day, as seriously as the formal panels. ‘Sometimes the most important outcome of a conference is not what happens on the podium,’ he said. ‘It is what happens between people after the formal sessions.’
The golf tournament, Osarunmewense said, doubled as a metaphor for the workforce challenge OGTAN is trying to address. ‘It requires preparation, discipline, concentration, patience, strategy, and continuous improvement,’ he said. ‘Success does not come from one perfect shot; it comes from consistently making the right decisions, learning from mistakes, and improving on them again.’ Winners of the tournament were recognized during the dinner, though Osarunmewense told the room that ‘everyone who participated is a winner, because you have contributed to strengthening the relationships and the community that underpin this conference.’
OGTAN, which represents training providers and technical institutions serving Nigeria’s oil and gas sector, has positioned the 2026 conference as a platform for identifying specific competency gaps across the industry and matching them with training solutions from local and international partners. Sessions over the coming days are expected to cover technical and vocational training standards, workforce localisation requirements, and partnerships between energy companies and educational institutions.
Osarunmewense closed his remarks by thanking sponsors, speakers and member organisations for supporting the event, framing the conference as an early step in a longer campaign to rebuild the technical talent base underpinning Nigeria’s energy economy.
The conference continues through the week at the Petroleum Training Institute in Warri.